One way to prevent avoidable issues is to approach building for accessibility the way you build a web or native app from the ground up, in a stack of technologies, where each one has its role to play. Just like you carefully consider what backend language (if any), framework language, and additional libraries you might want to use for your app before you start building, the same should be done for accessibility.

Our Best Practice of the Week (BPOW) looks at an often unknown area of accessibility: animations that have an adverse effect on a variety of people. Recent updates to CSS and JavaScript have made it really easy to implement fun, engaging animations on a web page. Be it CSS transitions or keyframes, or the latest jQuery SVG animation framework, one thing to keep in mind is your animation may make the user uncomfortable.

You may have heard that display:none is bad for accessibility and that you should use off-left positioning instead. It isn’t about using display: none; or off-left positioning. It isn’t just about screen reader users. It’s about making an interface work for everyone with efficient keyboard access for everyone that needs it—sighted or not.

iOS allows the user to switch to a “high contrast” display—essentially reversing the colour scheme. This doesn’t give the fine control of colours that a desktop operating system provides. With the use of a user style sheet and a slick bookmarklet, a user can apply a custom stylesheet to mobile Safari on their iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch so that they can display the web site or application to suit their own styles.

Safari 5 and other browsers like Opera, Internet Explorer, FireFox and Chrome allows users to set a user stylesheet preference. This enables a user to take control over their experience—styling the site the way they want it to be displayed, overriding the author styles.

Love letters? Get ours straight to your inbox

Sign up for occasional Simply Accessible news and special deals.We’ll never spam or sell your information. You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of our emails. If you have any questions, please contact us.